Women On Low End Of High Tech

June 03, 1985|By Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

SAN JOSE, CALIF. — High-tech fields, praised as a new horizon of opportunity for female workers, may be offering women the same old serving of low wages and limited mobility, according to a national study by Stanford University researchers.

Men dominate prestigious jobs in the high-paying industries that create high technology, the study finds, while women are relegated to jobs in the lower-paying industries that use the technology.

``These findings dispel the myth that high tech is automatically a great equalizer`` of occupational disparities between men and women, according to the study by Myra Strober, director of Stanford`s Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance. ``High tech may produce integrated circuits, but it does not necessarily produce an integrated work force or eliminate the female-male earnings differential.``

The researchers examined the progress of women in computer-related occupations by comparing 1970 and 1980 U.S. Census data. The study found that in both 1970 and 1980 most men in high-tech industries held managerial and professional-technical or production jobs, while most women held clerical or production jobs.

In addition, the researchers said, women in nontechnical fields were more likely to hold managerial or professional-technical jobs, while women in high tech were more likely to be in production.

``We find . . . that these industries are no less segregated by gender than are other industries, and in fact may be even more so,`` the report said. Strober, a labor market economist, said: ``High tech is touted as the place where women are going to get a better deal because it`s less

stereotyped. . . . If you have what it takes, you`re going to make it. And I think that is true for some people.

``But on average, women in high tech are more likely to be in production than they are in other industries; they are less likely to be in management than women in other industries, and they`re less likely to be professional and technical workers.``

The study`s major conclusion is that although many computer-related occupations are of relatively recent origin and have grown dramatically in recent years, ``they are already remarkably segregated by gender``--with men holding a majority of the jobs on the cutting edge of the technology.

In 1970, women were 2 percent of all engineers in the computer industry. That had increased only to 5 percent by 1980.

Similarly, the number of computer specialists in all industries who are women grew only from 20 percent to 28 percent between 1970 and 1980.

However, women in 1980 were almost 60 percent of the computer operators and 92 percent of the data-entry operators in all industries. They also dominated the less-skilled high-tech production occupations, including about 73 percent of the assembly jobs and 77 percent of the electronics assembly work.